Don't be so defeatist!
It seems that way at first, but it actually is not as hard as you might think to find good Irish.
There are thousands of books out there written in perfect Irish, and they are not that hard to find (the one issue with them is they aren't all that fascinating, often).
It is also easy to hear native speakers if you watch the news on TG4 (beware of almost everything other than the news though, or at least skeptical). The reporters, for the most part, are flawless, although do not listen closely to any of the people they interview.
There are many websites that can help with pronunciation of individual words, including forvo, fuaimeanna, and even teanglann.
In general, it is not actually that hard to find non-Urban Irish. If you want to learn it, you can. The reason for the Urban people's Irish is that they did not want to learn the "native" version. They first learned their cúpla focal in primary school and probably didn't pay any attention to pronunciation, grammar, idiom, or anything. Later in life, when they became actually interested in Irish, they did not start over from scratch, but kept their urban foundation. They improve their Irish mostly by speaking to one another, not to native speakers. They are interested in an "Irish speaking culture" that is entirely separate from the culture of the Gaeltacht. They are not criminals and their culture is perfectly valid as well, but my point is that they have chosen their Urban Irish--it is not that they had no other choice. On the other hand, there are other people in Ireland who have a different interest in Irish (aka not the urban kind) who are able to learn and speak fluent, native-sounding Irish by actively seeking it out.
AT LEAST (caveat) that is my understanding of the situation. I could DEFINITELY be wrong hahahahahahaha
The radio/television show "Comhrá" is a great example of how possible it is. I haven't listened to more than 20 or so of them, but everyone I have heard so far has had patent Irish. And not all of them have been native speakers. Yes, they are all very old, but that is because the show premise is interviewing old people before its too late, not because the only people who were able to learn Irish well are all dying (God forbid)
I, of course, do not have perfect native Irish.... yet. But I am optimistic that it will get there.
ps: i think I edited this 40 times. sorry
Huh, I'd never heard of Fuaimeanna! Will keep that site for later.
And gotcha, I'll be selective with who I listen to. I'll give precedence to TG4's presenters.
I like your perspective on Urban Irish learners. It is a shame things are going that way. You know--hard as it is to say--I think Urban Irish has the potential to be the new Irish, although flippantly disregarding the Irish that came long before... but at this point, you have to wonder how successful it would be, as it seems its users can all too quickly claim, "well, it's
dialect!" So, the branches of Urban Irish could end up as divergent and mutually-unintelligble as certain aspects of the official Irish dialects right now.